Prior put to the test

But when has life in the England team ever been comfortable for Matt Prior?

He will start his 16th Test match against West Indies at Lord’s today with an average of 48.00 – only Kevin Pietersen can boast a better record in the squad – but can anyone say with a degree of certainty that Sussex’s wicketkeeper-batsman will be involved in the Ashes battle later this summer?

The next month could make or break Prior as an international cricketer. He is in the squad for the two-Test series and the three one-day internationals but his omisson from the squad for the Twenty20 World Cup which followed has come as a bolt out of the blue for the 27-year-old.

Instead, new England coach Andy Flower has chosen his former Essex team-mate James Foster six years after he last played for England.

The feeling persisted during Peter Moores’ reign that Prior and Luke Wright owed their selections to Sussex favouritism and that debate, albeit involving a different coach and county, might just start again especially if another Essex player, Ravi Bopara, does not deliver at No. 3 this week.

Prior will have to put all that to the back of his mind at headquarters today. He has five games to prove he is still the best wicketkeeper-batsman in the country so he can fulfil his dream of playing against Australia.

Despite those impressive batting stats, criticism of Prior’s glovework has never been far away and resurfaced again in the Caribbean where he conceded a world record number of byes in the Barbados Test.

In the build-up to Lord’s he has again been practising with former England keeper Bruce French, who has replaced his boyhood hero Alec Stewart as his mentor and chief confidant since he regained his England place last August.

Prior said: “I’ve been working with Frenchy on a few things since I got back. Keeping for me will always be a work in progress which is something I don’t think my critics understand.

“You are never going to catch everything or get to every single ball. At the moment I feel if I’m not doing that the pressure is straight back on me.

“But I’ll take it on the chin and move on. I can’t work any harder at my game. I will just stay true to myself and my beliefs and trust in the people who believe in me.”

There is something wrong if Prior does not approach the first engagement of a packed international summer full of confidence after his 140 in last week’s County Championship match against Hampshire and four first-innings catches to add to the five he took against Lancashire a fortnight ago.

His previous four innings this season had brought him scores of 50, 4, 0 and 3 and he was nearly out first ball at the Rose Bowl when an edge dropped an inch short of second slip.

But he went from strength to strength in similar conditions he is likely to encounter this week and a million miles from the dead tracks he encountered in the West Indies where a ball hardly seemed to deviate off the straight throughout the tour.

He said: “It’s been quite tough to adjust so I was delighted to get a score last week although I’ve felt in pretty good nick.

“For ten weeks the ball hardly moved off the straight in the West Indies and then I had to face Jimmy Anderson swinging it both ways at Hove in April – it takes a bit of getting used to.”

Prior has been promoted to No. 6 in the absence of the injured Andrew Flintoff which was his station in Port of Spain in February when he made 131 not out, his second Test hundred.

As ever, though, it is his keeping which will come under intense scrutiny.

Whatever happens, Prior will adopt a more phlegmatic attitude to the highs and lows. First-time fatherhood tends to do that.

“It has changed the whole way I look at things,” he said, before heading off to spend some precious time with wife Emma and his son who was born whilst Prior was in the Caribbean.

“It just puts everything else into perspective and the last few weeks have been an amazing experience. You can have a bad day at the office and you come home, see him smile and all the problems melt away.”